51–60 of 237 posts
I've said this before, but the only thing that will convince me that these companies are actually laying people off due to AI will be when they start replacing their leadership staff with it. Until that happens--IMO it's just an excuse to reduce the overhired workforce without tanking their stock.
There's a ton of middle managers and high-ranking roles whose jobs are to basically supervise other people.
If the people go, they do too.
Interesting that the author doesn't mention a reduction in working hours as a solution because I see that as THE solution. Federally mandate an 18 hour work week and job demand will soar. It's just as fanciful a thought as his other suggestions given how little power we have over the federal government to exercise our will.
That change and everything else being equal means much less pay for workers. It is no golden bullet
It might be informative to compare this with what happened when retailers introduced automated checkout machines. It seems that the net effect on staff sizes was not that dramatic. These stores need more anti-theft security people and some oversight. Not to mention the people they need for technical support. I wonder if there will develop a new category of skills for checking that AI produced code is correct, effecti…
I dont think the layoffs are due to that. It is affecting entry jobs rather badly, but that (anecdotely) constitutes minority.
Interesting that the author doesn't mention a reduction in working hours as a solution because I see that as THE solution. Federally mandate an 18 hour work week and job demand will soar. It's just as fanciful a thought as his other suggestions given how little power we have over the federal government to exercise our will.
Solid summary I think, but reading “what the country does if some significant percentage of our 100 million knowledge workers gets laid off because of AI” confused me deeply. Does verifying the difference between whole milk and oat milk qualify the barista as a knowledge worker?
The quote links to a BIS report which establishes that, yes, the 170-million strong US workforce really does have 100 million (actual) knowledge workers and baristas don't count. Service workers are outnumbered by computer jobs.
BLS link 404’d for me:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/pdf/what-is-the-gig-ec...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn’t bet on this
Just become a black hat then. It will be easy to find problems in everything but the very top percent of AI generated software.
(I did make sure the challenges didn’t ban AI).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investors weren't bailed out following the pop of the dot com bubble. I don't think that AI investors will be bailed out afterward if this is another bubble.
Dot com pop caused significant repercussions for many people. I don’t think GP implied the AI bubble would get bailed out, just that if it pops, life gets unpleasant for lots of folks.